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Corresponding Author

Mohamed Thabet, Ahmed

Subject Area

Architectural Engineering

Article Type

Original Study

Abstract

Downtowns are important as the open new horizons of development through contribute to the upgrade of traditional communities. The presence of city centers and downtowns has been approved as a major influential component on the image of the city as it can serve as a unifying force in a city or town through triggering force for community enrichment. Lynch [1] described the environmental image in terms of five structural features which are essentially making sense of cities urban spaces: districts, edges, paths, nodes, and landmarks. These elements face continuous transformations that make their perception more complex and multi-oriented. The urban space becomes full of overlapping and intertwined stories that have made a continuous change, complexities, and multi-characteristics in the urban image. The purpose of this paper is to develop a criteria framework from different studies and worldwide experiences, using both urban indicators and Lynch's method in the evaluation of urban spaces. This would allow urban planners and designers to receive immediate feedback on the relative quality of urban design and perception decisions. The downtown in Mansoura City was selected as the subject of this case study. Three observation points were taken along Mansoura downtown and proposed for evaluation. The results show that it is possible to produce a list of indicators which represent the axis of the evaluation process developing an effective method that better models the complex information concerning urban design elements.

Keywords

Downtown Evaluation, Imageability, Image of Mansoura Downtown, Criteria Framework

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